Americans and Sports


Looking at season ticket plans for next year for the Carolina Hurricanes, my local NHL team that are a serious contender to win the Stanley Cup this season but don't have a large fanbase, it's $2500-5000 for anything on the lower level. I think it's a 41 game home schedule. You can get in as low as $860 for the worst seats in the upper deck, but even decent seats up top are $2000+.

Back when things were normal, the wife could usually get her hands on a pair of free lower level tickets for 3 or 4 games a season through her work. It's a class experience and easily the most fun American live sporting experience unless you really like getting drunk in the sun at a day baseball game, but I'm not paying that kind of money even for a single game when I can just watch it on tv if I'm interested. I'm not made of money.
 
Chicago White Sox. I grew up in the small part of the Chicago area considered to be White Sox territory and not Cubs territory. There are a lot of similarities both on and off the field between Newcastle-Sunderland and Cubs-White Sox (north side-south side). Or at least there were until the Cubs finally won the World Series in 2016. I hate them.
For all I don't really understand the game, I always got the impression that baseball was the most romantic of the American sports. I know NFL's huge, but I think baseball has more in common with football than American football does.
 
Can any of our US friends discuss the issue of season tickets. Are they common over there? Are prices so prohibitive that you only go once a season, make a day of it with a tailgate party and obviously splash out at the mega store?
they're like subscriptions. you pay monthly, but you can sell any game you want on stubhub. i actually like that. if i had a sunderland st i would most likely not attend midweek games so would like to be able to sell my ticket to someone else (legally).

prices vary massively depending on the seat package. you can get a jets ticket for like 30 bucks, plus 30 bucks for the tailgate (unlimited booze and food normally) so 50 quid for your day out.
Very true... I know a couple of family members who share a couple between 6 mates
a few of the lads in our NY office have 4 rangers tickets and rotate between themselves and their families.
Looking at season ticket plans for next year for the Carolina Hurricanes, my local NHL team that are a serious contender to win the Stanley Cup this season but don't have a large fanbase, it's $2500-5000 for anything on the lower level. I think it's a 41 game home schedule. You can get in as low as $860 for the worst seats in the upper deck, but even decent seats up top are $2000+.

Back when things were normal, the wife could usually get her hands on a pair of free lower level tickets for 3 or 4 games a season through her work. It's a class experience and easily the most fun American live sporting experience unless you really like getting drunk in the sun at a day baseball game, but I'm not paying that kind of money even for a single game when I can just watch it on tv if I'm interested. I'm not made of money.
im an islanders fan. canes clean swept us in 2019. dicks.
 
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Considering how massive the US is, I would assume there's almost a league in each state for some sports.
That right? Then there's the bigger teams which are your state team.
I've never really followed any US sports so I have no idea
 
Looking at season ticket plans for next year for the Carolina Hurricanes, my local NHL team that are a serious contender to win the Stanley Cup this season but don't have a large fanbase, it's $2500-5000 for anything on the lower level. I think it's a 41 game home schedule. You can get in as low as $860 for the worst seats in the upper deck, but even decent seats up top are $2000+.

Back when things were normal, the wife could usually get her hands on a pair of free lower level tickets for 3 or 4 games a season through her work. It's a class experience and easily the most fun American live sporting experience unless you really like getting drunk in the sun at a day baseball game, but I'm not paying that kind of money even for a single game when I can just watch it on tv if I'm interested. I'm not made of money.
I went to see a Rangers game with the family when I was in New York a few years ago. Paid a fair whack for tickets and nearly fainted when I bought a couple of beers and bottles of water. Seeing groups of blokes getting rounds of beers and snacks all night I guessed that they couldn’t afford to do that on a regular basis, more of an occasional thing.
Great experience though
 
I’ll try to answer as best I can. Teams do have fans and there are season tickets that are sold. Fans are spread all over the place in this country. I was born is Virginia far away from Washington DC. From birth I essentially inherited my parents loyalties to the teams in Pittsburgh since there were no local teams where I was born. With no fear of relegation or the excitement of promotion, my weekends aren’t even dented in the slightest if any of them lose. Teams that lose consistently over here are rewarded with a high draft pick in of itself has a high value attached to it.

In comparison My weekends take a huge hit when the lads let me down.
And isn't that the difference between the competitions? Some of the American sports are so protected without relegation and promotion as to be almost meaningless whilst, in the UK and Europe, for example, everything is invested in winning games by the players, manager and fans and the players share the same intensity as the fans whether winning, drawing or losing. That can best be exemplified by the outspoken comments of Premiership managers and ex players in the past 24 hours.
 
They are very common. They are all but mandatory for the NFL and the better teams in the other sports. The better teams might hold back a handful of tickets for general sale, but they will be at the top of the stadium and still cost a fortune. I know in the Michael Jordan era, the Bulls season ticket waiting list was two to three times the actual capacity of the arena. Then he left and within a year the arena was lucky to be two-thirds full.

Now plenty of season tickets are gobbled up by corporations and ticket brokers, so it's often easy to find tickets on secondary markets, but it could cost you a fortune.
The company I used to work for had a bunch of season tickets for the Rockets (Basketball), Texans (NFL) and the Astros (Baseball)

They also had exec boxes.

Pretty much all of the games I’ve been to have been through these.

My Mrs still works for them and runs the Exec boxes, so If anyone’s in Houston and wants to see a Texans game let me know. If the box isn’t full I can usually sort out tickets.
 
But it's not just America look at wimbledon moving to MK (or Dublin as that was 1st choice) or in Rugby Wasps moving from London to Coventry. Couple of years ago I was talking to Wasps fans when they played at the Falcons and they said it was easier to get to Kingston Park then a home game, as every game was an away day.
 
And isn't that the difference between the competitions? Some of the American sports are so protected without relegation and promotion as to be almost meaningless whilst, in the UK and Europe, for example, everything is invested in winning games by the players, manager and fans and the players share the same intensity as the fans whether winning, drawing or losing. That can best be exemplified by the outspoken comments of Premiership managers and ex players in the past 24 hours.
That’s the biggest difference in my opinion. The MLS here could introduce it for there are lower tiers of football here they just don’t do it in fear of losing out on their guaranteed pot of cash and peace of mind knowing their club can suck and not be punished by being dropped out of the league.
 
That’s the biggest difference in my opinion. The MLS here could introduce it for there are lower tiers of football here they just don’t do it in fear of losing out on their guaranteed pot of cash and peace of mind knowing their club can suck and not be punished by being dropped out of the league.
I'd rather stop watching football completely than support teams in leagues such as that suggested. Or, better still, I'll still go and watch local football teams who give their all just to win a game.
 
Some of our American based posters might be best placed to shed a bit more light on this, @burchmackem, @NYMackem, @njmackem etc...

With your various sports, franchises, conferences, teams moving across country etc - Do Americans actually get it? Are they just sports fans, or do they have supporters?

Take for instance when the Dodgers left Brooklyn - what the frig happened to their fans? Did they even have any? Were people upset?

More recently the Raiders have bounced from Oakland, to LA, back to Oakland, and now reside in a swanky new stadium in Las Vegas. This is a team with 3 Superbowls to it's name. Have all their fans bounced along with them? The ever faithful cross the Sierra Nevada every other week to cheer them on?

Do season ticket holders exist? Would Phase 3 ever be a thing?

Do grown men cry when success/abject failure rears it's head in the post-season?

Do fathers pass their loyalties onto their sons?

Are weekends completely ruined when their team loses?

Do they care?
Loads of questions. I'll do my best:

1. I would argue that a portion of fans 'get it'. But the distinction between fans and supporters is different, to be fair. The divide between ownership and the people in the stands in most cases is very wide -- with the exception, say, of the Green Bay Packers, who are, to my understanding, the only publicly-owned franchise in the NFL. Nevertheless, there are still passionate fans of their local teams who do travel with said teams game-to-game, and sometimes that loyalty extends even post-move. It's just tougher, given our geography, to physically follow a team to all of its away games.

2. When the Dodgers left Brooklyn, yes, people were furious. It's the same for most franchises that pull up stakes and leave. I was sad, for instance most recently, for Expos fans who essentially lost their franchise totally when the team moved to DC and was renamed the Nationals. It's got to be gutting for die-hards, as much as it was when Wimbledon moved to Milton Keynes. For some reason, the willingness to do this kind of relocation is more common over here, as evidenced by the Atlanta Braves, the SF Giants, the Utah Jazz, the LA Lakers, etc. etc. At least the ownership of the Nats had the decency to rename the team. I can assure you Utah is the least 'jazzy' state in the Union and there are few natural lakes in LA.

3. Of course season ticket holders exist. (I don't know what Phase 3 is.)

4. Yes, grown men cry when postseason highs or lows are experienced.

5. Yes, loyalties are passed on.

6. Yes, weekends are ruined.

7. Yes, they care. There are caveats with everything -- and some fan-bases are more rabid than others (Boston, Philadelphia, New York). And some are terrible and fickle. For instance, LA Dodgers fans -- some of them -- are notoriously flaky. One of my favorite embarrassing moments as a Dodger fan was in Game One of the 1988 World Series at Dodger Stadium when the clearly-hobbled Kirk Gibson hit a walk-off game winning home run in the bottom of the ninth inning with two outs and the count 3-2 against Oakland ace Dennis Eckersley. As the ball flies over the right field wall, you can clearly see a long line of brake lights from people leaving early to beat the traffic. Hysterical.


 
For all I don't really understand the game, I always got the impression that baseball was the most romantic of the American sports. I know NFL's huge, but I think baseball has more in common with football than American football does.
It's not very stressful to be an NFL fan. 16 games a year plus playoffs and for plenty of teams you know you're playing for a draft pick by Week 9. It's why we have to sit through months of pointless NFL Draft coverage at this time of the year. The desire for content far outweighs the actual on field action. Baseball is an incredible grind. 162 games and the average game length is over 3 hours. It's pretty much every day from April thru September and then the playoffs in October. It's not hard to see why today's short attention span American has made the NFL the #1 sport. It's still impressive that MLB attendances pre-Covid averaged around 30,000 per game. That's in the range of 65 million paid fans for the whole season. It remains very popular in old time baseball cities like New York, Chicago, Boston and St Louis and not so much in the south, even if most of the players are from warm weather states and Latin America where kids can play baseball outside for most of the year.

I love old statistical history like the wonderful TheStatCat site. Baseball has an incredible recorded history and you can find full player stats and game history going back to the 1880's. It took decades for the NFL and especially professional basketball to gain legitimacy. The NBA didn't even start until 1946. If you watch clips from an old football/basketball/hockey game from 1950 it looks wildly old and outdated compared to the current game, but baseball is just about the same.

I should also clarify as an American that I hate everything about the Super League. Every bit of why football is interesting is promotion/relegation and the novelty of the Champions League giving us just a handful of meaningful continental matches a season that are worth watching. I'm just glad when I really discovered the Premier League via my dial-up modem at age 20 that I was such a masochist that I was attracted to a relegation bound team in a city I'd never heard of because I first saw a highlight of a match where they conceded a devastating late equalizer (f***ing Des Lyttle) to another shit team on a MOTD type show shown in the middle of the night on a sports cable channel. Something about the madness in the crowd in a very old stadium struck me. So back when there were no live PL matches to be seen in the USA and nobody here knew or cared who the fuck Manchester City or Chelsea were, I was wearing my collared Lambton's jersey top and living and dying waiting for score updates for a club not even in the PL anymore on sporting-life.com and the early RTG type boards. Everyone I knew had no choice but to know about Kevin Phillips and had to ask why our intramural indoor soccer team was named FTM. I've never been happier with that decision even as we prepare for the likelihood of another season in the 3rd division.
 

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